The Arnold Schwarzenegger Workout Routine, Checked: 14 of 22 Claims Are in His Own Words, and the Six-Day Week Is Not Among Them

Search for the Arnold Schwarzenegger workout routine and you are handed a six-day, twice-a-day program to copy. He says his prime years sometimes meant five hours a day with weights. Now 79, he says he rides a bike, lifts lighter weights for about 45 minutes, often on machines, and still trains every day.

Our newsroom took 22 claims repeated on the program pages and in news coverage and looked for each one in Schwarzenegger’s own words: his newsletter, Arnold’s Pump Club, his 2023 book Be Useful as quoted in a review, an essay under his byline, and interviews. Every row links to the page we read.

What We Found

Of 22 repeated claims about the Arnold Schwarzenegger workout routine that we checked on 11 November 2026, 14 trace to his own words in a named source, including all eight about how he trains in his seventies.

Fourteen of the 22 concern his competitive years, and six of those trace to him in a named book, newsletter or interview. Two more appear as quotations on a page that names no source for them. For the other six we found no first-person source in the pages we read.

The six include the detail most program pages lead with. We could not find Schwarzenegger himself saying he trained six days a week. The nearest was the bodybuilder Tom Platz, who said on Dorian Yates’s podcast in January 2024, as BarBend reported, “[Schwarzenegger] trained six days a week, sometimes twice per day.”

The eight claims about his current training are the plainer ones: a bike ride, light weights, machines, an early start.

What Was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Workout Routine in His Prime?

By his own account, a double split. In Be Useful he writes that he trained two and a half hours in the morning and two and a half hours in the evening. He has said he always trained chest and back together, took his reps to failure, and sometimes lifted for five hours a day.

The book line, as InsideHook quoted it in November 2023, reads: “I trained two and a half hours in the morning and two and a half hours in the evening, just so I could get two full workouts in each day.” InsideHook places it after his move to America.

In 2023 he shared a chest and back session from those years in his newsletter. Coach, whose writer tried it, quoted him: “It took me at least two hours, and then I went back to the gym for another two-hour workout at night.”

T3 listed the session as supersets and tri-sets of chin-ups, presses, flys, rows and pullovers. In a Pump Club reader Q&A he put the pairing in one line: “I know you asked for pecs, but as you probably know, I always do chest and back together.”

On effort, he told Tim Ferriss in 2023: “In bodybuilding, we go until failure, with our reps.” On hours, he told Business Insider in October 2025: “I sometimes trained five hours a day with weights.” He called it “a lot of stress on the body”.

The Arnold Schwarzenegger Workout Routine, Claim by Claim

The third column says whether we found the claim in his own words. “Quoted, no source named” means a page prints the words as his without saying where he said them.

Claim	Period	In his own words?	What the pages show	Sources
Trained six days a week	Prime	No first-person source found	Third party only. Tom Platz: “[Schwarzenegger] trained six days a week, sometimes twice per day.”	V3 Apparel, BarBend
Trained twice a day (the double split)	Prime	Traced to him	“I trained two and a half hours in the morning and two and a half hours in the evening”	V3 Apparel, InsideHook
Trained up to five hours a day	Prime	Traced to him	“I sometimes trained five hours a day with weights”	Hevy, Business Insider via AOL
Chest and back trained on the same day	Prime	Traced to him	“I always do chest and back together.”	Hevy, Arnold’s Pump Club
A fixed weekly schedule: chest and back Monday and Thursday, shoulders and arms Tuesday and Friday, legs Wednesday and Saturday	Prime	No first-person source found	Hevy: “The 6-day workout split Arnold used is a bit of a mystery”. Bodybuilding.com gives a different week	V3 Apparel, Hevy, Bodybuilding.com
Each muscle group trained twice a week	Prime	No first-person source found	Old School Labs says three: “would also train each muscle group three times a week”	Fitness Volt, Old School Labs
Sunday was the rest day	Prime	No first-person source found	None found in his own words	Fitness Volt, V3 Apparel
20 to 30 sets per body part	Prime	Traced to him	For legs: “I had to do my 25 sets”	Old School Labs, Bodybuilding.com
80 to 100 sets in a session	Prime	No first-person source found	Reporter’s narration in an interview with him, outside the quotation marks	Business Insider via AOL
Trained to failure	Prime	Traced to him	“In bodybuilding, we go until failure, with our reps.”	Hevy, Tim Ferriss transcript
6 to 12 reps a set	Prime	Quoted, no source named	“I make a point of never doing less than 6 repetitions per set with most movements, and nothing higher than 12.”	Bodybuilding.com
Barbells and dumbbells over machines	Prime	Quoted, no source named	“Rely on barbells and dumbbells instead of cables and machines”	Bodybuilding.com
Began with the Golden Six, three days a week	Prime	No first-person source found	His own account of starting: “It’s how I started, with pushups, sit-ups, and squats.”	Liftosaur, Arnold’s Pump Club, LiftVault
First session early in the morning at Gold’s Gym	Prime	Traced to him	“When Franco [Columbu] and I got to the gym at 7 a.m.”	Bodybuilding.com
Still trains every day	Now	Traced to him	“still training every day at 78”	Business Insider via AOL, Arnold’s Pump Club
Rides a bike 45 minutes to an hour a day	Now	Traced to him	“I ride the bike around 45 minutes to an hour a day.”	Business Insider via AOL, Fitness Volt
Lifts weights for about 45 minutes	Now	Traced to him	“I work out with weights at Gold’s Gym, I would say around 45 minutes a day.”	BarBend, Fitness Volt
Lighter weights, more reps, less rest	Now	Traced to him	“I use lighter weights but more repetitions and less rest between sets to keep the intensity up.”	BarBend, Newsweek
Prefers machines to free weights	Now	Traced to him	“the machines are better simply because there’s certain movements I can’t do because of shoulder problems or knee problems”	Business Insider via AOL
Gets up at 5am	Now	Traced to him	“I get out of bed at 5am and everything starts.”	Men’s Health via Yahoo
Cycles to Gold’s Gym before breakfast	Now	Traced to him	“I feed my animals in the morning and immediately after I’m finished with that get on the bicycle and bicycle down here.”	BroBible
Stopped heavy lifting because of heart surgery	Now	Traced to him	“After my heart surgeries, doctors told me heavy lifting was no longer an option.”	Fitness Volt, Newsweek

The set counts are a judgment call. His “25 sets” described his thighs, in a comparison with Franco Columbu’s “5 sets of squats and 5 sets of leg extensions”, so we counted the 20 to 30 claim as traced for legs only. The 80 to 100 figure sits outside the quotation marks in Business Insider’s interview.

Where the Published Versions Disagree

V3 Apparel’s page, near the top of Google for the search on 11 November 2026, presents “his exact weekly schedule from his prime bodybuilding years”: chest and back on Monday and Thursday, shoulders and arms on Tuesday and Friday, legs on Wednesday and Saturday, morning and evening, with Sunday off. The page says the routine was “verified by Arnold through his books and interviews” and names none of them.

Bodybuilding.com’s version is a different week: chest and back three mornings, legs later the same days, each muscle group about three times a week. Old School Labs also says three times. Hevy’s guide, which builds a six-day plan, concedes the point: “The 6-day workout split Arnold used is a bit of a mystery, but that doesn’t matter.”

It matters to anyone copying it. Hevy adds that he “likely tweaked his training methods countless times”, and his own line in the Pump Club agrees: “Franco and I treated the gym as our laboratory.”

The beginner program has the same gap. Liftosaur’s Golden Six page, the first program result for the search, dates it to “the early stages of his career”, and LiftVault, which it links to, says it “was used in the early days of Schwarzenegger’s training”. Neither names a book or an interview.

His own account of starting out, in another Pump Club issue, is humbler: “It’s how I started, with pushups, sit-ups, and squats.” And: “I did pullups on trees.”

Our check of the Tom Brady diet found a similar split: 15 of 20 claims traced to Brady or his chef, and the strictest versions came from someone else. Confident sources disagree often. In our Alchemist summary, four of 11 pages giving a sales figure said 150 million copies and three said 65 million.

What Does Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Workout Look Like Now?

By his own account, a bike ride of 45 minutes to an hour, then about 45 minutes of light weights at Gold’s Gym, every day. He says he uses lighter weights, more repetitions and less rest between sets, and prefers machines because shoulder and knee problems rule out some movements.

The durations are his words as Fitness Volt quoted them in December 2023, when he was 76, from a video the site credited to the SmartLess YouTube channel: “I go on a bike ride, I ride the bike around 45 minutes to an hour a day.” And: “I work out with weights at Gold’s Gym, I would say around 45 minutes a day.”

Reporters have given other numbers. BarBend, describing a May 2023 Men’s Health video, put the lifting at roughly half an hour. Business Insider wrote in 2025 that his workouts last “about an hour and a half” and include 25 sets. Neither figure is inside quotation marks. The 45 minutes is his own figure, in the words Fitness Volt quoted.

The method is in a Newsweek essay under his byline, published in July 2026: “I use lighter weights but more repetitions and less rest between sets to keep the intensity up.”

On equipment he told Business Insider: “the machines are better simply because there’s certain movements I can’t do because of shoulder problems or knee problems”. A quotation that travels without a source has the younger man saying the opposite: “Rely on barbells and dumbbells instead of cables and machines.” Bodybuilding.com prints it after “Arnold once said” with no publication.

The morning has a fixed order. He told Men’s Health in 2023, as BroBible reported from the magazine’s visit to Gold’s Gym in Venice: “I feed my animals in the morning and immediately after I’m finished with that get on the bicycle and bicycle down here.” In a 2021 newsletter, quoted by Men’s Health, he gave the hour: “I get out of bed at 5am and everything starts.”

That is early, though not extreme, by our own data. In our study of the morning routines of successful people, the 23 leaders who gave a wake time had a median of 5:30. Our count of the Mark Wahlberg morning routine found a median wake time of 3:00.

Why Did Arnold Schwarzenegger Stop Lifting Heavy?

Because of his heart, by his own account. In Newsweek he wrote that after his heart surgeries, doctors told him heavy lifting was no longer an option. In the 2023 video quoted by Fitness Volt, he said he lifts “very light” because of heart surgery in 1997, and he told Tim Ferriss his doctor’s instruction was “Don’t train as heavy.”

He describes it as a change of purpose. “When I was competing as a bodybuilder, strength meant one thing: more,” he wrote. “Now my workout routine is about control, consistency and making sure I can keep moving tomorrow.”

We make no claim here about what light weights, machines or a daily bike ride do for anyone. This piece records what he has said, and where he said it.

Where the Routine Meets the Business

Schwarzenegger is listed as publisher of Arnold’s Pump Club, with Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell as editors-in-chief. The same issue that recalls his pullups on trees gives readers a pushup and lunge ladder to do at home, with a starting number for beginners, intermediates and advanced lifters. On his 79th birthday, Hola reported, he offered four Pump Club programs free for a year.

The Business Insider interview came with a campaign as well. He was promoting “You’ll Be Back” for Zimmer Biomet, where he holds the title Chief Movement Officer. None of that makes his account false. An athlete’s name turned into a product line is an old model, and our piece on Michael Jordan’s net worth traces Jordan Brand through 11 years of Nike filings.

The program pages have an interest too. Several belong to workout apps and one to a clothing brand. Robert Cialdini’s Influence, the one title on all 16 lists in our guide to Charlie Munger books, explains why a famous name moves people.

What a Busy Executive Can Borrow

The double split belonged to a man whose job was training. The part that has lasted six decades is smaller, and he has described it more exactly than any program page describes his week.

Remove the decision. “The only reason why someone doesn’t want to go to the gym when they get up is because they were thinking,” he told Men’s Health. “That’s the biggest mistake you can make.” His 2021 newsletter says the same of the whole morning: “What has kept me consistent is that I never have to think about this.” And: “It’s a routine, so it is ingrained in me.”

That is a standing rule, settled once and written down, the kind of rule our guide to the Amazon leadership principles suggests a small company copy before it needs one.

Put the hard thing first. He rides and lifts before breakfast, and breakfast, he told Men’s Health, is “when I can start thinking.” Our Deep Work summary covers the other end of the day, the shutdown ritual that eight of 13 summaries mention.

Count showing up as the result. “Some days, the win is a great workout,” he writes in Arnold’s Corner, the Pump Club section the newsletter labels as his own writing. “Some days, the win is that I showed up when I didn’t want to.” In Newsweek: “On those mornings, I don’t wait for inspiration. I get up anyway, and somewhere on the bike ride or a few sets in, I’m back.”

Write the work down. As a teenager, InsideHook reports from Be Useful, he chalked every intended rep on the gym’s board: “I wouldn’t let myself leave until I’d marked them all off.” John Wooden drew the same idea as a diagram, and nine of the 15 blocks in John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success are actions you can take this week.

Let the method change and keep the appointment. He swapped barbells for machines and running for a bike, and kept the daily slot. Marcus Aurelius, first on nine of the 18 lists in our ranking of stoicism books, kept his own rules in private the same way, and our guide to building discipline starts where motivation runs out. Schwarzenegger’s 2021 line: “Motivation is important, but routine is what builds consistency.”

Know what was specific to him. Our guide to The Almanack of Naval Ravikant found 13 of 17 summaries cover Naval’s idea of specific knowledge, and five hours a day in a gym was exactly that for a professional bodybuilder. Check a famous name’s rules before adopting them, as our How to Win Friends and Influence People summary does with Dale Carnegie’s 30 principles.

How We Did This

On 11 November 2026 our newsroom listed 22 claims about Schwarzenegger’s training that recur on pages ranking in the US for the search, including V3 Apparel, Hevy, Liftosaur and Fitness Volt, and in news coverage since 2021. For each we looked for him stating it in the first person: in Arnold’s Pump Club, in Be Useful as quoted by InsideHook, in his Newsweek essay, in the Tim Ferriss transcript, and in interviews quoted by Business Insider, Men’s Health, Bodybuilding.com, BroBible and Fitness Volt.

A reporter’s paraphrase did not count. A quotation with no named source was counted separately. We left out one further claim, on steroid use, because its only first-person source was a statement of doses, which this piece does not cover. We did not read his books in full and could not load Men’s Health’s own pages, so “no first-person source found” means none in the pages we read. We make no health or training claims. The full dataset, with the quote and source for every row, is available on request.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many hours a day did Arnold Schwarzenegger train?

In his prime, by his own account, “sometimes” five hours a day with weights, and in Be Useful he describes two and a half hours in the morning and the same again in the evening. In 2023, as Fitness Volt quoted him, he put his day at 45 minutes to an hour on a bike and about 45 minutes of weights.

Does Arnold Schwarzenegger still work out every day?

He says so. His newsletter has him “still training every day at 78”, and in a 2023 video quoted by Fitness Volt he said, “I have to go on bike rides every day, I work out every day.” Business Insider’s 2025 headline says “nearly every day”.

What is the Arnold split?

It is a six-day program published under his name: chest and back, shoulders and arms, then legs, each twice a week. Liftosaur says its version follows the “Basic Training Program” in his book The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding, and that his competition routine “involved twice-daily sessions with far higher volume”.

The schedule everyone publishes is the part of the Arnold Schwarzenegger workout routine we could verify least, and the routine he keeps at 79 is the part he has described most exactly. It runs to a bike, light weights and a fixed hour, with the question of whether to go already settled.